They teach you when you’re a young litigator that when you’ve got the law on your side argue the law, when you’ve got the facts on your side argue the facts and when you’ve got neither the law nor the facts on your side, bang your fist on the table.

So it is in baseball: when you’ve got a talented roster play up its talent, when you’ve got an experienced roster play up its experience and when you’ve got neither talent nor experience talk up the “clubhouse culture.” Example: the Miami Marlins:

Marlins baseball operations president Larry Beinfest spoke to reporters today and was asked about improving the clubhouse culture. He wouldn’t name specific players who contributed to the sour mix last year. But the goings-on with players like Hanley Ramirez and Heath Bell are well-documented … Whether some individuals we thought were more part of a poor clubhouse, I’m not going to go into any of that other than we have made significant changes. We have done our homework on prospects, the makeup of the player has been important.

That’s great and all, but the poor clubhouse culture from before, to the extent you can lay it at the feet of guys like Ramirez and Bell, is really the doing of Jeff Loria. Loria fired Fredi Gonzalez when he dared call Ramirez out on his loafing and bad attitude, emboldening him even more. Then he signed Bell and gave him a huge contract against the advice of his baseball people. He then fired the manager who tried to take a hard line with Bell when Bell didn’t like that he was no longer the closer.

So, good luck with the team chemistry, Miami. It should last until Loria decides, once again, to meddle with his team too much and undermine his manager and executives.